Novell ZENworks

Novell ZENworks, a suite of software products developed and maintained by Novell, Inc. for computer systems management, aims to manage the entire life cycle of servers, of desktop PCs (Windows or Linux), of laptops, and of handheld devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs). As of 2011 Novell planned to include full disk encryption functionality within ZENworks. ZENworks supports multiple server platforms and multiple directory services.

Elements of the ZENworks Suite

In July 2015 the ZENworks Suite consists of seven individual products:

As of July 2015 the product „ZENworks Mobile Management" is not yet an element of the Suite. Additionally, Novell offers an ITIL version of „Novell Service Desk". This version is ITIL certified by PinkVERIFY and supports ten ITIL v3 processes. E.g. Change, Incident, Problem and Service Level Management.

Customers can buy the whole suite or choose between individual elements.

History

Kevin Hopton, a corporate systems engineer at Novell, first conceived of the software which later became NAL (Novell Application Launcher) in 1993. The original concept involved using the Novell Directory Services (NDS) directory as a namespace and storage engine. NDS, in concert with a client console program, would perform just-in-time application-configuration. The directory namespace - global, unambiguous and outside the influence of end users - provided a highly reliable mechanism for ensuring that expert staff could define the methods invoked for launching an application (app).